Hard Times Contexts

 As we finish Hard Times, I thought it might be a good occasion to offer some cultural contexts to our main text. Some of them are specific to particular characters or scenes, while others are more general, having to do with the broad issues of industrialization, education, and the stratified class society of Britain at the time.

Doorway at Georgiaville Mill

Bounderby of course is a comic exaggeration, but also representative of his class. Builders and owners of factories were, in the nineteenth century, fast rising to the top of a class system in which wealth had previously been determined by property ownership. Think of any Austen novel and the idea of £10,000 a year -- these thousands came not from industry or labor, but from rents on land, much of which had been in family hands for generations. Now, the Bounderbys of the world could command no less an income, and perhaps even more, though they were still exploiters of those who generated their wealth (bear in mind that Marx and Engels first came up with their theories of this while living in England). Here in Rhode Island, of course, our own local Bounderbys have left their names on their mills and thus the landscape -- Christopher Olney gave his to Olneyville, Zachariah Allen to Allendale, and so forth. Allen also owned the Georgiaville Mill in Smithfield; although now converted to condominiums, the entrance still bears his initials: ZA and the date 1853 -- while his stately home in Providence is now the Brown Faculty Club.

As to the circus and "trick" riders, this was another aspect of cultural life enormously popular at the time. The best-known establishment of this kind was Astley's Ampitheatre, which Dickens himself visited on my occasions. One of its stars around this time was Pablo Fanque, later to be immortalized by John Lennon in "Mr. Kite" (Lennon took most of his lyrics from an old theatrical poster he'd bought at a junk shop):

The Hendersons will all be there

Late of Pablo Fanque's Fair, what a scene

Tom's use of a "blackface" disguise also brings up another uncomfortable history, that of blackface minstrel shows. Dickens, in fact, was partly responsible for the spread of this form of entertainment to Britain; while touring the United States he penned an account of his journey, published in 1842 as American Notes. In it, he described seeing a talented young African-American dancer known as "Juba"; in 1848 Juba himself arrived in London, and was billed as "Boz's Juba" (Boz being Dickens's nickname); the enormous success of his appearance there paved the way for touring American "minstrel" shows, which then became lastingly popular in Britain -- so much so that a television show in blackface, the Black and White Minstrel Show, ran on the BBC from 1958 to 1978(!) Charities, police associations, and even cub scouts often sponsored their own minstrel shows as fundraisers; some of these continue to this day (having switched to clown makeup) and are known as "Gang Shows."

Lastly, we'd be remiss if we didn't consider the very large class of persons -- of which Mrs. Sparsit is a shining example. The BBC estimates that, as of 1901 (the peak of the profession), no fewer than 1.5 million people were employed as domestic servants. The wealthy of course employed a large and specialized force, with lady's maids, housemaids, butlers, and gardeners -- but even a moderately well-off middle class household probably employed at least one or two. Life in service could be perilous -- if one were dismissed from one's position with prejudice, it was almost impossible to obtain further employment -- and of course, servants were often the witting or unwitting witnesses of all manner of domestic jars.